IMF warns world economy risks chronic new phase of financial crisis

Report finds financial system is only part-fixed and further action is needed to tackle underlying threats to stability

 

The International Monetary Fund has warned that new risks to global financial stability are already emerging before the problems left by the deepest slump since the 1930s have been sorted out.

In its half-yearly healthcheck on the financial system, the Fund said failure to deal with old and new risks risked propelling the five-year old crisis into a fresh chronic phase.

José Viñals, the IMF's financial counsellor) said the improvement in financial markets seen over the past six months would not be sustained unless policy makers addressed "key underlying vulnerabilities".

READ MORE:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/17/imf-world-economy-risk-new-financial-crisis

China economic growth lower than forecast

China's economy, the world's second-largest, has slowed and performed worse than many analysts expected in the first three months of the year. 

Annual growth was 7.7% in the January to March quarter, compared with 7.9% in the previous three months. Analysts had forecast a figure closer to 8%.

China wants to spur growth after it hit a 13-year low in 2012.

Other key data on Monday also came in lower than market expectations, raising questions over the outlook for growth.

Industrial output rose 8.9% in March from a year earlier, much lower than analysts' targets of 10%.

READ MORE:   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22148991http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22148991

China's economy will be No. 1 in less than 20 years, US study says

WASHINGTON - China's economy is likely to surpass the United States in less than two decades while Asia will overtake North America and Europe combined in global power by 2030, a U.S. intelligence report said on Monday.

"Meanwhile, the economies of Europe, Japan, and Russia are likely to continue their slow relative declines," it said.

The report, "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds," was issued by the National Intelligence Council, an analytical arm of the U.S. government's Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In addition to U.S. intelligence analysts, the report includes the views of foreign and private experts.

READ MORE:  http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/chinas-economy-will-be-no-1-less-20-years-us-1C7511557

Completely Predictable

Government Spending Per Household Exceeds Median Household Income

Terence Jeffrey

As reported in my new book, “Completely Predictable,” the combined spending of federal, state and local governments per American household actually exceeded the median household income for 2010, which is the latest year for which all relevant government data are available.

In fiscal 2010, according to numbers published by the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), net spending by all levels of government in the United States was $5,942,988,401,000. That equaled $50,074 for each one of the 118,682,000 households in the country.

In that same year, according to the Census Bureau, the median household income was $49,445.

READ MORE:  http://www.sumnerbooks.com/books/view/completely-predictable

People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% - the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is "improving."

READ MORE:  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-05/people-not-labor-force-soar-663000-90-million-labor-force-participation-rate-1979-le

Eagle Ford Shale provided $61B economic boost to South Texas

AUSTIN — Last year, the Eagle Ford Shale had a $61 billion impact and supported 116,000 jobs across a 20-county swath of South Texas – a once sleepy region increasingly defined by an oil and gas boom.

The latest numbers from an ongoing University of Texas at San Antonio study continue to show a ballooning financial effect as the industry races to drill oil wells in the region.

The results of the study were released Tuesday at a meeting of the Eagle Ford Shale Caucus at the Texas Legislature, a group of South Texas lawmakers hoping to bring attention to the road, water, health and other infrastructure needs brought on by the influx of workers and truck traffic into the region.

READ MORE:  http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/03/26/eagle-ford-shale-provided-61-billion-economic-boost-to-south-texas/

Wall Street Journal’s Crony Capitalist Conference Turns Sour

Times have changed since the Wall Street Journal held its first “ECO:nomics—Creating Environmental Capital” conference at the super-swanky Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara.  I was there in 2008 (but, alas, stayed at the Best Western in downtown Santa Barbara) when several hundred investors and corporate CEOs listened to leading crony capitalists, including Jeff Immelt of GE, James Rogers of Duke Energy, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical, and John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers (where Al Gore was also a partner), smugly explain how they were going to strike it rich off the backs of consumers and taxpayers with green energy subsidies and mandates, federal loan guarantees, and the higher energy prices that would make renewable energy competitive with coal, oil, and natural gas once cap-and-trade was enacted.

This year’s sixth annual conference, which I didn’t attend, was also held at the Bacara Resort, but the mood was apparently different.  Yesterday, the Journal ran a six-page supplement that summarized the conference’s highlights.  The lead article by John Bussey was headlined: “Green Investing: So Much Promise, So Little Return: At The Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference, the talk was about all the innovations taking place in renewable energy—and about all the investors who are losing interest.”

READ MORE:  http://www.globalwarming.org/2013/03/27/wall-street-journals-crony-capitalist-conference-turns-sour/